This action research study examines the impact instruction informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with a particular focus on tenor and socio-cultural theory has on sixth, seventh and eighth grade English language learners in an urban school. Over the course of seven and 1/2 months I used Systemic Functional Linguistics with a focus on…

Many public school districts struggle with the federal and state charge to increase student achievement while continuing to build the instructional capacity of classroom teachers. While this charge may not seem to be unreasonable, the widening achievement gap between various student subgroups as evidenced in standardized testing results presents…

When evaluators plan site-randomized experiments, they must conduct the appropriate statistical power analyses. These analyses are most likely to be valid when they are based on data from the jurisdictions in which the studies are to be conducted. In this method note, we provide software code, in the form of a SAS macro, for producing statistical…

In science teaching, metaphors are important tools for understanding meaningful learning and conceptual formation by the help of daily life language. This study aims to evaluate how the concepts of heat, temperature and energy are perceived by students in secondary school science classes and how the perceptions of these concepts vary in terms of…

This article presents an Exponential Growth Learning Trajectory (EGLT), a trajectory identifying and characterizing middle grade students' initial and developing understanding of exponential growth as a result of an instructional emphasis on covariation. The EGLT explicates students' thinking and learning over time in relation to a set of tasks…

Drawing on the self-system model, this study conceptualized school engagement as a multidimensional construct, including behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, and examined whether changes in the three types of school engagement related to changes in problem behaviors from 7th through 11th grades (approximately ages 12-17). In addition,…

The primary objective of this special issue is to synthesize results from recent reading fluency research endeavors, and to link these findings to practical uses of reading curriculum-based measurement (R-CBM) tools. Taken together, the manuscripts presented in this issue discuss measurement work related to new metrics of indexing student reading…

We present an analysis of students' reflective writing (diaries) of two cohorts of Grade 8 students, one undergoing inquiry and the other traditional science teaching. Students' writing included a summary of what students had learned in class on that day and their opinions and feelings about the class. The entries were analysed qualitatively and…

Textbooks are one of the primary teaching tools frequently used in schools and most teachers use them in their classrooms (Sanchez and Valcarcel, 1999). Since there are a lot of abstract concepts in science education, images in science textbooks play a vital role in the learning process (Kenan et al., 2011). Concretization of abstract concepts may…

A cluster-randomized trial (CRT) relies on random assignment of intact clusters to treatment conditions, such as classrooms or schools (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). One specific type of CRT, a multi-site CRT (MSCRT), is commonly employed in educational research and evaluation studies (Spybrook & Raudenbush, 2009; Spybrook, 2014; Bloom,…

We tested the effects of teaching reading skills through U.S. History content for 38 eighth-grade poor readers whose reading ability ranged from 2nd to 4th grade levels. Half of the students received special education services and half of the students were English Language Learners. Students were taught to decode multisyllabic words, learn…

For more than four decades the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has tracked the achievement of U.S. students in major academic subjects. This national resource is the only assessment that states and now many urban districts can look to as an objective yardstick of their performance over time, relative to national benchmarks, and…

This case study research reports on elementary (grade 8) and secondary school (grade 9) teachers' participation in job-embedded, professional learning and engagement in collaborative inquiry. Teachers constructed an inquiry-oriented media literacy unit following the collaborative inquiry model. The current study sought to investigate how…

Bringing history alive in one Southern, suburban middle school, this application of community-action service-learning and Artful Learning is chronicled from inception to conclusion. This qualitative participatory action research study explored the effects of this program on 8th-grade gifted students. The purpose of the study was to examine one…

Twenty-four studies were included in this systematic review of vocabulary research literature. The review corroborates the findings of past studies that several strategies have emerged that increase students' vocabulary knowledge. Findings further reinforce the National Reading Panel's recommendations regarding the context and magnitude of studies…